For the bank holiday weekend we headed north to visit J's folks. The reason for picking that weekend was that the Blanchland show is on on the bank holiday Monday & J wanted to go to that as he'd not been in something over 10 years.

We drove up on the Saturday, leaving rather earlier than usual. It being a bank holiday the traffic was pretty dreadful, and the services we normally go to had very confusing roadworks round them. But we got there mid-afternoon with no near death experiences :D Jo and Chris arrived a little after us and then somehow it seemed to be time for beer :)

We went out for drinks after dinner - I think there was an excuse, but I can't remember what it was now. I think we got in at about 2am, maybe a little later ... it's all a little hazy ;) The inevitable hangover meant I missed most of Sunday, but Anne postponed the roast till the evening (I wasn't the only one suffering - Chris didn't get up till nearly night-time). We still managed to fit in a walk up to Allenshields - looking for phone reception and dead moles; we only found the latter and they seemed to be last years.

Monday was, as I've said, show day. J's Dad is a good gardener & enters things in most of the horticultural categories - we helped him take stuff across first thing in the morning, then left him to set up & stuff while we slobbed about the house for a bit. We headed back to the show at about 2pm and spent a while looking round the stuff in the main tent. I'd not been to a show like that before, it was interesting to see all the categories people could enter things in - as well as the flowers & vegetables there were cakes & eggs & various handicrafts & photos. And a whole bit for kids, with things like Monster Face Pizzas. If we go up another year we should take the pic J took of Derwent reservoir & enter that in the photos of the local area section :)

We then poked around the rest of the show - there was a falconry exhibition, but I wasn't that impressed, it was very kid oriented and the birds weren't co-operating anyway. There was also a showjumping competition which we watched quite a bit of - it was more interesting than I'd expected.

After that it was time for the prize giving - J's Dad had won 2 things, Best Floral Display on House and most points for the Flowers, I think.

Jo and Chris had to head back home after that - they were working the next day - and we anticipated a quiet evening in. But that wasn't quite how it turned out - we went out about 6pm for "a drink" but as these things always seem to go one drink led to another and somehow we didn't come back till 10pm. By that stage J's Mam had given up waiting for us to come back for dinner and gone to bed.

Unsurprisingly we were a tad in the doghouse on Tuesday morning ;)

I can't quite remember what we did on Tuesday, just chilled out I think. I know we did get a walk in - up through the woods to Cowbyre Bank and back. (That was also partly a quest for phone reception which was succesful. There were no dead moles, this time.)

Wednesday was my birthday :D But we spent most of it driving home, which involved two near death experiences that time (it all averages out, you see). The Dove were having a beer festival that week/weekend so once we were home & fed we headed out for birthday drinks :)